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00000176-d8fc-dce8-adff-faff71570000The Boise-metro market was hardest hit in Idaho's housing crisis, with foreclosures concentrated in Ada and Canyon Counties.Idaho’s housing boom was centered around its two main metropolitan areas, Boise and Coeur d’Alene.John Starr of the global real estate company Colliers International had a front-row seat as capital poured into the local housing markets in the years preceding the bust.When he thinks of the early 2000s, he remembers watching land prices rise with demand, and house lots shrink. What the area wound up with, he says, were more and more subdivisions, packed tight with houses.Census data show that the state’s population grew by more than 28 percent from 1990 to 2000, and by more than 20 percent from 2000 to 2010. Starr said that's due in large part to growth at Micron Technology. That growth, in turn, fueled Idaho's housing boom.“The reason we were doubling the national average growth rate was we were moving in a whole bunch of people that we couldn’t produce here in Idaho, namely electrical engineers and so forth to work at Micron. The data points that people were looking at that were helping them make decisions about coming to Boise and deploying capital and building and helping us grow – those data points were skewed.” - John Starr, Colliers InternationalAccording to Metrostudy, a housing and data information company, Boise’s housing market began to bottom out in 2009.

Data: How Idaho's Housing Market Has Changed Since 2006

Scott Graf
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Boise State Public Radio

The Boise housing market is coming off the strongest sales period the region has seen since before the housing bubble burst in 2008. Low interest rates and relatively low demand helped drive home values higher this summer.  

Homes sometimes sold within hours of being listed, sellers were getting multiple offers, and realtors were seemingly working around the clock. The month of July was the most active the market has been since before the recession.  Privately, some in the industry even wondered if the market was getting too hot too fast, and another bubble was around the corner. A quieter August and September helped quell those fears.

A side-by-side look at data from the summer of 2013 shows that while the Boise-area housing market has been improving, it’s still a long way from reaching pre-crash levels. To illustrate differences between the two periods, we compared 11 key categories from July of 2006 and July 2013.

Here’s how they stack up.

Credit Data: Intermountain MLS | Infographic: Emilie Ritter Saunders / Boise State Public Radio
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Boise State Public Radio

KBSX this week will look at several aspects of the Treasure Valley housing market. On Tuesday, we’ll examine one segment of the market that’s struggling to bounce back: new home construction. Wednesday, we’ll report on how the improving market is boosting realtor numbers. And of course, we’ll have plenty of data-filled charts and even more context posted here on the website. 

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